dreiser wrote:Yeah, the price of a ticket is negligible for a double bill. It's the hotel, transportation, and meal costs which get to be a bit much.

Ah. I thought you lived in San Francisco. I was wrong.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

This is the initial post for The Rematch between The Philadelphia Story (1940) and High Society (1956)

This Rematch is complete as of 11 January 2014.

Suggested by ribbon

Essays for the Quickmatch of The Philadelphia Story and High Society.

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Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

This is the initial post for The Rematch between Rollerball (1975) and Rollerball (2002)

This Rematch is complete as of 27 January 2014.

Suggested by dreiser

Essays for the Quickmatch of Rollerball films.

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Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

We finally got this buggy to page 35, so it's okay to put up the Initial Posts for the two January 2014 Quickmatches.

Thus, I have done it. Whew! That's a load off my mind.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Didn't want to hot link the image, so it's just a regular link to today's comic. Rrrrrremakes!

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Barreling Forward
On Christmas Day I got all the technical posts ready for the Philly/Society (PHS) Rematch, including the graphics. I have the essays written and need only graphics for them. And the reviews remain underway. I need to watch The Philadelphia Story again, because it's been years since I saw it. And then I can write the full reviews, and ... well, let's just say I learned a lot procedurally when I did the ScumFlasHMatch.

I also learned a lot from taking a month off in December.

Rollerball is close behind in terms of completion. Both reviews are written and need only graphics. The essays are nearly done. The tech posts haven't been started, though.

I've got things underway for the The Blob Rematch and for King Kong's Multimatch. And I'm trying to decide what to do with the thread when I reach the end of Round Three. (Already made a graphic for Round Four, but if there is a Round Four there might be fewer than 9 Rematches in it.)

Well, excuse me a moment while I barrel on!

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of The Philadelphia Story (1940) & High Society (1956)Lines You Might Like

Phillip Barry's Broadway stage play has many quotable lines that were brought into both filmed versions of the story that we're analyzing. Most of the lines appear in both films, as a matter of fact, sometimes with slight alterations between the 1940 and 1956 incarnations. The dialog is witty and dense and delightful to hear, if you like that kind of thing.

1940Uncle Willie: (hung over) Awww... this is one of those days that the pages of history teach us are best spent lying in bed.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Macaulay Connor: The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Tracy Lord: You hardly know him.C. K. Dexter Haven: To hardly know him is to know him well.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>C. K. Dexter Haven: Orange juice, certainly.Tracy Lord: Don't tell me you've forsaken your beloved whisky and whiskies.C. K. Dexter Haven: No-no-no-no. I've just changed their color, that's all. I'm going for the pale pastel shades now. They're more becoming of me. How about you, Mr. Connor? You drink, don't you - alcohol, I mean?Macaulay Connor: Oh, a little.C. K. Dexter Haven: (Amused) A little? And you a writer? Tsk, tsk, tsk. I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know, at one time I think I secretly wanted to be a writer.
(He and Tracy exchange scornful looks)

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Macaulay Connor: Tracy.Tracy Lord: What do you want?Macaulay Connor: You're wonderful. There's a magnificence in you, Tracy.Tracy Lord: Now I'm getting self-conscious. It's funny. I - Mike? Let's...Macaulay Connor: Yeah?Tracy Lord: I don't know - go up, I guess, it's late.Macaulay Connor: A magnificence that comes out of your eyes, in your voice, in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. You're lit from within, Tracy. You've got fires banked down in you, hearth-fires and holocausts.Tracy Lord: I don't seem to you made of bronze?Macaulay Connor: No, you're made out of flesh and blood. That's the blank, unholy surprise of it. You're the golden girl, Tracy. Full of life and warmth and delight. What goes on? You've got tears in your eyes.Tracy Lord: Shut up, shut up. Oh, Mike. Keep talking, keep talking. Talk, will you?

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Macaulay Connor: What's this? Is it my book?C. K. Dexter Haven: Yes.Macaulay Connor: C. K. Dexter Haven you have unsuspected depth!C. K. Dexter Haven: Thanks, old chap.Macaulay Connor: But have you read it?C. K. Dexter Haven: When I was trying to stop drinking, I read anything.Macaulay Connor: And did you stop drinking?C. K. Dexter Haven: Yes. Your book didn't do it though.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: We've come for the body of Macaulay Connor.C. K. Dexter Haven: I'm so glad you came. Can you use a typewriter?Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: No, thanks, I've got one at home.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: I remember your honeymoon quite well. You and she on a little sail boat, the "True Love", wasn't it?C. K. Dexter Haven: Yes it was. How did you know?Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: I was the only photographer whose camera you didn't smash. You were terribly nice about it. You threw it in the ocean.Macaulay Connor: Oh, one of those.C. K. Dexter Haven: Yes I had the strange notion that our honeymoon was our own.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Tracy Lord: How do I look?Seth Lord: Like a queen. Like a goddess.Tracy Lord: And do you know how I feel?Seth Lord: How?Tracy Lord: Like a human. Like a human being.

1956Uncle Willie: My dear boy, this is the sort of day history tells us is better spent in bed.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Mike: Don't dig that kind of crooning, chum.Dexter: You must be one of the newer fellows.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Mike: Mr Kittredge, it may interest you to know that our so-called affair consisted of exactly two kisses and one rather late swim both of which I thoroughly enjoyed and the memory of which I wouldn't part with for anything. After which I returned here, carried her to her room, deposited her on her bed and promptly returned here which you will no doubt remember.George Kittredge: That's all?Mike: That's all.Tracy: Why? Was I so cold? So forbidding?Mike: Not at all. On the contrary but you were somewhat the worse or the better for the wine and there are rules about such things.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Mrs. Lord: George told us what happened. Your father will make an announcement.Tracy: Oh thank you. No, no, I got myself into this, I'll get myself out. Ooh.Dexter: Go. Go.Tracy: (Opens the door to address the guests) Good morning
(to the organist)Tracy: Will you stop that racket? Good morning. I'm afraid there's been a slight hitch. My fiancé that was... that is... he's decided we should call it a day and I quite agree with him and... oh Dexter help me please?Dexter: Say "two years ago I did you out of a wedding in this house by eloping to Maryland"Tracy: Two years ago I did you out of a wedding in this house by eloping to Maryland.Dexter: "But I hope to make it up to you now by going through with it as originally planned."Tracy: But I hope to make it up to you now by...
(looks at Dexter, he nods and smiles)Tracy: by going through with it as originally and most beautifully planned.Dexter: "So if you'll just keep your seats a moment"Tracy: So if you'll just keep your lovely seats a momentDexter: "That's all"Tracy: That's all
(shuts the door)Tracy: Oh Dexter, are you sure?Dexter: No, but I'll risk it if you will.Tracy: You're not just doing it to save my face?Dexter: It's such a sweet old face.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Tracy:I'm such an unholy mess of a girl.Dexter: Oh, come on, that's not even good conversation, Tracy.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Uncle Willie: I can't find Liz.Dexter: I think I just saw someone wander out on to the terrace. Alone.Uncle Willie: You don't say. The little vixen!
(leaves)Dexter: Ollie ollie oxen free!
(Liz comes out of hiding)Dexter: What's the matter? Uncle Willie giving you a little trouble?
Liz Imbrie: That man's gonna wind up a juvenile delinquent, mark my words.

<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>-+-<.<..>.>Mike: (on telephone) This is the voice of doom.Mrs. Lord: What?Mike: This is to tell you your days are numbered.
(hangs up)Mrs. Lord: Oh dear. One of the servants has been at the sherry again.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

The rich are not like the rest of us. We spend everything we make, or close to it, and one incident can wipe out our life savings. They spend profligately, and don't damage their ability to meet their bills. One character in these films bemoans the fact that the wealthy can no longer afford to have multiple homes. Awww. Poor richies.

Rich people have problems, too. That is, they also have problems, but not the kind of problems the rest of us have. I knew a couple in Memphis who referred to their 3000 sq. ft. house as "the little house." And it's true, the one they have in Houston is much larger. I have some friends here in the Hills who own two homes. They don't think of themselves as remotely wealthy. No one I've ever known who was really wealthy thought of themselves as wealthy.

So, if you were to be able to live the way the Lords and Havens do, you'd probably not recognize yourself as rich, either. Rich is identifiable only from outside the condition, whereas both rich and poor can recognize poverty.

A homeless person on the streets is not likely to look around him/herself and say, "You know, everything I own is in these two backpacks, but I'm not really poor. You can't exactly call me poor!"

So does The Philadelphia Story normalize the rich? Don't the rich people in the story act a lot like we do? Maybe. Well, except when Dinah/Caroline and Tracy Lord are putting on their "weird" show for Mike and Liz, which the Spy magazine staff never buy in the first place. The rich folk in the tale act a lot like we do, except possibly more drunk more often. Is being rich boring? Becoming wealthy turned George Kittredge into a jerk. Uncle Willie seems like a fun guy up to a point, but he's also rather irresponsible. And the daughter who hates her absentee father is behaving in a rather working class way in that regard.

So, maybe they are just people. But no matter how hard the shows might try to make me believe that the rich are normal, it won't work. The "normal" people are all huddled under the bump in the Bell curve.

Ah, maybe I can explain the difference. You watch The Philadelphia Story, and a lot of people would want to live like the Lords and Havens (and they know they'll never make it). You watch The Grapes of Wrath, and not many people at all would pine for the lifestyle of the Joads (although they know that they're one lost paycheck away from joining them).

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I scan, but do not read these linked articles all the way through. The links are offered for your pleasure, if you choose to read them.Rich People Still Don’t Realize They’re Rich by CATHERINE RAMPELL The New York Times blog April 19, 2011, 1:41 pm A Simple Economic Truth America's Super Rich Don't Want Us to Know About By Thom Hartmann at alternet. Do you believe this? It may say something about you whether you do or don't. Also, from the article, "They call it "investing in real estate and the market," but it's really just gambling." And I've thought for years that it ought to be treated just like gambling! But, who am I?Yes, Gawker, 'The Good Rich' Do Exist Co-written by Brian Solomon and Caleb Melby 1/11/2013 @ 10:35AM at Forbes.com "Because Nolan doesn’t understand where the money comes from in the first place, he can’t see that simply writing a check — i.e. opening the doors to that metaphorical grain silo — isn’t an end in itself."Money Won't Make You Nicer: What Science Says About Rich People's Behavior The Huffington Post; By Catherine New; Posted: 07/05/2012 3:12 pm Updated: 07/05/2012 4:05 pm "But that still doesn't really explain other experiments in which the upper class displayed a propensity for entitled behavior, like breaking driving laws and cheating."bags of money image at Reuters PE Hub

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

I walked right past this plaque several times when I was in SF in December. (It's a Google Maps link. Give it a minute to load the street level view, and then spot the plaque on a building corner. You can zoom in, but you can't read the plaque). Three days ago I learned what it was. If only I had gone over a few steps to read it. It's a historical plaque for a fictional event! My son lives roughly two blocks from this corner! So when we set out we would sometimes walk right past it. I noticed it, but all the response I made was to think, "That's an odd place for a historical marker."

If I had looked at it, I could have had a photo of my homely self standing beneath it.

But, like, who'da thought, you know?

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Driven by the cold, brisk wintery winds in the Hills of Arkansas, there was a sudden flurry of posting activity...

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Philip Barry receives credit for both these films, because he wrote the stage play that forms the basis for both screenplays. In fact, in his filmography you'll find six references to The Philadelphia Story including versions made in (1950), (1954), (1959) and (1974); the latest four are TV adaptations, two are made-for-TV movies. Barry has an additional 18 writing credits, most of which are based on his Broadway plays that adapted so well to the screen. He died in 1949. Eleven of his screen credits are posthumous. His screen writing career took off in 1924, and ended, of course, in 1959. Except that it didn't. Like the marriage that died in The Philadelphia Story, his plays lived on as the source of filmed entertainment for another 15 years after he died.

Donald Ogden Stewartwon an Oscar in 1941 for his adaptation of Barry's play. This film is probably the most famous screen adaptation of The Philadelphia Story. It was his second nomination for an Academy Award. He was born in Ohio in 1894, and lived to be 85 years old. During a screenwriting career that spanned from 1926 to 1965 he earned 43 film/TV credits. Stewart has an additional 3 posthumous screen credits as writer. He never reached the level of acclaim that he got for The Philadelphia Story, except in that one case. He often received no screen credit, or was asked to be a script doctor writing additional dialog. Stewart wrote the screenplay for Life With Father (1947). IMDb lists The Women, a George Cukor film from 1939 as Stewart's work, but he has no on-screen record of this. Stewart retired to England where he lived until his death.

John Patrick adapted Barry's play for the musical screen in 1956. Between 1936 and 1983 Patrick garnered 51 writing credits. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1947 for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), a film I've heard of and read about, but never have seen. As a professional name, John Patrick Goggin dropped his surname; he was given that name in 1905, and finished using it at age 90 in November 1995.

Among his other screen adaptations are Tea House of the August Moon (1956), Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) and The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968). Patrick also wrote for television programs, including Leave it to Beaver and The David Niven Show. Most of his television writing was for TV movies, though. And for the bulk of his career he wrote for theatrical release.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of The Philadelphia Story (1940) & High Society (1956)At the Helm

1940George Cukor directed Grumpy in 1930. Romeo and Juliet (1936). Worked on The Wizard of Oz without credit, same for Gone With the Wind, in 1939. But for his 1940 stint at the helm of The Philadelphia Story he got an Oscar nomination as Best Director. Eventually, his fifth nomination in that category would win him an Oscar in 1965 for My Fair Lady. 1950 would bring one of my favorite play-to-film adaptations, Born Yesterday under Cukor's direction. He is one of the directors whose career is taught in film school (at least it used to be). Not every result among his 67 directorial credits will ring a bell as you read the list of titles at IMDb, but a large number will. Cukor's last film came out in 1983. He died on January 24 of that year. He was one year old in 1900, 30 when he began a directing career that would go on for 53 years. 83 when he finished his career and his life.

1956Charles Walters got a nomination for an Oscar, for his work on Lili (1953). Walters has choreographer credits, writing and composing credits. And 29 credits as director. In fact, he both directed the film and the choreography in Lili. If you've seen Meet Me in St. Louis you've seen his work as a dance director. From 1945 to 1976 he directed several well-known musicals, including Easter Parade (1948), High Society (1956), and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964). He also directed Westerns and non-musical comedies. High Society is possibly his highest-profile musical film. Like George Cukor, according to the IMDb bio, Walters had a reputation as a "women's director," helping his actress stars to shine on screen.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A first-love film of mine. That means, the first time I saw it I loved it. And after a recent re-watch, I still do. Having never understood why Kate Hepburn was ever box-office poison gives this modern viewer an insight into how different people of that era were, on the inside. This makes me wonder whether the outcome of the plot is driven by what comes before it, or by audience expectations of the day.

I have to admit, though, that a modern film would be unsuccessful if it had the same core idea and it didn't end the way this one does. Certainly, the situation makes the audience want that. (Although a certain film-aficionado that I sometimes become would have liked to see my sweet-ending expectations totally thwarted!)

The cinematography is superb. The black and white photography has depth, and is crisp. The sound recording seems very good for 1940. The editing style is also crisp, with no showy cuts. The actors really bring out the center of each character, making them seem rounder than they are written (see a comment below). I cannot help but recommend this film to anyone who wants to have a solid foundation of good classic movies in all genres. The play has a kind of breadth that is rare for screwball comedy era films, but the cast and crew pull it off.

I once thought that it runs on in places, but on my most recent viewing I realized that it's pretty constant in its just less than overwhelming pace. A lot happens in those 112 minutes.

Above all, this is a comedy that doesn't lack a dark streak. That makes it "balanced" in a way many comedies are not. One of my unnumbered favorite movies of all time.

Here are some aspects of the film and whether I like them or don't care for them:

Like: The plot convolutions of the original play and this first screen version are delightful. They aren't hard to keep up with, but once in a while the unexpectedness of an event or a line brings a chuckle.

Like: I'll put this here, although I'm torn by it, in reality. The film tells a tale that ends the way it has to. What must come about, comes about. Anything else would be terribly unsatisfying. Furthermore, it's basically a modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew. At least it shares the main theme with that play.Don't Like: As a 21st century viewer I see slightly too much moralizing in the way this ends. Tracy is hard to get along with. Basically, she's a bitch. And she gets her comeuppance for being that way. On the other hand, she does change for what is probably the better.Like: Tracy is the only character in the story who is not flat. She's set up to change, and she does so. Yet, the performances are so vibrant that you might not even notice that the others are constant. In the hands of less capable actors the play would be quite dismal and predictable, but Grant, Hepburn, Stewart and company make you think it's not going to turn out the way you think it will, once in a while.

Like: Dexter is not quite so sanguine in this version of the story. He is snippy at times, sarcastic, and can come across as arrogant once in a while. But he also owns up to his flaws more readily than Dexter in the remake because...well, because he has them.

Like: Catherine Hepburn's performance is so on the money that you actually feel things for the character instead of simply watching her, the way you do all the other characters of the play. The character who comes closest to being sympathetic behind Tracy is Jimmy Stewart's Mike Connor.

Like: The scene between Mike and Dexter takes place at Dexter's house in this version. It is the cleverest and wittiest scene of the entire movie, full of smiles and laughter (on the viewer's part).

Like: Dinah's role in how things turn out is much clearer in this first film version of the story. And young Virginia Weidler is so charming in her portrayal of an intentionally bratty little sister who never gets called out for what she does. I love the character, and she has one or two of the better lines in the play. When her mother points out that her dress rises up behind, she looks over her shoulder and says, "Oh? No, I do."

Like: George Kittredge as embodied by John Howard is someone that turns out to be above himself in toniness, but is a more likable character than the one in the remake. He plays Kittredge a little less self-righteously than John Lund does in the musical. He makes it clear without ever having to state it, that Kittredge sees himself as being below this station that he's planning to marry into, and shares some of the prejudices Mike Connor has about people of "this class."

Don't Like: The final scene where Dexter puts words in Tracy's mouth as she announces that they are going to get married is played better in 1956. Not by a great margin, but it seems less forced, more natural with the way Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly play it. I don't think Dexter is supposed to be manipulative at this point, but Grant is still playing him as manipulative. Or maybe it just seems that way to me. In one of the essays I point out that Dinah is manipulating everything from behind the scenes, anyway. So he's being manipulated into manipulating, so to speak.

I can understand that some people, especially modern viewers might not like this film. But anyone of any age who enjoys well-drawn interaction between characters should find it easy to have an overall favorable reaction to it. The Philadelphia Story is one of those rare black & white movies that I remember in color. I know I never saw it in color, but my memories add the colors to the scenes!

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of The Philadelphia Story (1940) & High Society (1956)Behind the Lens

1940Joseph Ruttenberg was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and died 93 years later in Los Angeles, CA (his parents came to America when little Joseph was 4 years old acc. IMDb, but Wikipedia says 10 years old). He won 4 Oscars during his career as a cinematographer. This was out of 11 nominations for Best Cinematographer between 1939 and 1961. Ruttenberg won the 1st, 4th, 8th and 9th times he was nominated for the award.

Ruttenberg first stepped behind the camera in New York for a 1917 Fox release called The Blue Streak, a Western directed by William Nigh. In 1931 he photographed The Struggle for D.W. Griffith, which was Ruttenberg's first sound film. IMDb reports that Ruttenberg decided to move to Hollywood in 1933, where his career flourished. He worked for MGM from 1934 to 1963. His use of moving camera techniques, and use of depth of field to distinguish actors from the background were innovations that quickly spread to other DPs and studios. In the 1950's, according to IMDb, he moved into color photography. He retired in 1968 with 139 photography screen credits to his name.

1956Paul Vogel also spent most of his career shooting for MGM. He got an Oscar in 1950 for Best B&W Cinematography based on his work in the film Battleground (1949). Vogel was busy from 1927 to 1970. He shot films and television episodes. They were not always great films or shows, but many of them are well-known. In 1960 he was the lighting cameraman for The Time Machine, which was featured in one of our first Remake Rematches (way back on pg 4 of the thread!).

High Society came later in his career. There are only 27 of Vogel's 113 credits following this film, including all his television work. The filmography page at IMDb shows that he is best known for The Time Machine (1960), High Society (1956), Battleground (1949), and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962). Vogel even has a director credit for a film he made while in the Army: Army Champions (1941) a documentary short. And, of note on this board, he is an uncredited additional photographer on Tod Browning's Freaks (1932), as well as cinematographer on Lady of the Lake (1947). Paul Vogel died at age 76 in Los Angeles, CA, in November 1975.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
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"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of The Philadelphia Story (1940) & High Society (1956)In the Cutting Room

1940Frank Sullivan was an Editor on 104 titles in his career. In 1926 he was cinematographer on 3 silent short features. He tried this again in 1928 on one short, but beginning in 1925 Sullivan focused mostly on cutting film. He last worked as editor on 19 episodes of my favorite Western series of all time, The Rifleman, from 1959 to 1962. He was retired for 10 years before his death in 1972 at age 76. He is best known for his editing work on The Philadelphia Story. His only brush with Oscar fame came with a nomination in 1949 for editing Joan of Arc (1948).

Sullivan is also known for editing Woman of the Year (1942) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). It looks like he edited every genre of film in his career, from musicals, to comedies, Westerns, war films, and tales of noir. He cut two Tarzan films with J. Weissmuller, one of which was Tarzan Finds a Son! (1939) which introduced Boy, played by Johnny Sheffield. Although I always thought it was stupid that even the chimpanzee had a name but the kid was merely "Boy", he was my favorite character because I could identify with him and imagine living in the jungle with Tarzan, Jane and the film crew.

1956Ralph E. Winters lived from 1909 (born in Canada) until 2004 (died in California). The first film he edited in 1941 was a sound picture. His name will come up again in a few months, because among his 76 editorial credits is the 1976 version of King Kong. Winters worked for 3 months editing the chariot race for Ben-Hur (1959). Many of his gigs were high-profile and big budget. There were musicals, Westerns, comedies, war films, and whatever you would call 10 (1979). He was handed 2 Oscars for editing King Solomon's Mines (1950) and Ben-Hur (1959), but had 6 career nominations for his editing skills. One of the nominations was for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) a musical that's good enough to have come this close to making my list of musicals that I like. Of course, it's on many lists of favorite musical films. Best of all, Winters was the adept hand that pieced together Blake Edwards' 1963 hit, The Pink Panther.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
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"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Contrivance is the engine for this dramatic tale. That isn't always bad. Shakespeare uses it constantly. Yep. It's almost Taming of the Shrew in modern times, it is. Tracy Samantha Lord Haven is out of hand. Divorced her first husband for merely being a drunk. Doesn't even want to see him or hear his voice ever again. Is about to marry again, this time to someone who's duller than dishwater.

It was the 1930s. Kate Hepburn was box office poison, but a damn good actress. A movie came out based on a stage play sort of based on something in real life. And in that movie, sort of a modern Taming of the Shrew, the female lead, Tracy Lord, was revealed to herself to be a sort of self-centered bitch. She repented and all was well with everything except the box office poison label.

Now why would she have the attitude she does toward C.K. Dexter Haven? Hollywood's answer: clearly, she is still in love with the man. He admits that he never has gotten over her. And, of course, audiences in the 1930s knew that people once married should never get divorced. "What God had soldered together, etc, etc."

For such a wonderful play, such a comedic delight, there are many things that are troubling to the educated modern mind. She even promises to "be ever so yar." The Southern Baptist Convention isn't listed as an author. What gives?

Oh, and Dinah (Caroline in 1956), her little sister is smitten by C. K. Dexter Haven (her ex) and plots with him to get him right next to Tracy on the eve of her wedding to some dowdy millionaire executive (can't think of his name; George something-or-other, I believe). Pesky little sister?

As much as does any other screwball comedy of the 1930s and 1940s, this one puts everything back together in Family Values order by the closing credits. So does High Society, because basically all it does is take out a few of the more laughable moments of the comedy and substitute some musical numbers that you'll be humming along to and tapping your toes to only as long as they are playing. Except for the song True Love. You will genuinely remember that one. Nothing else. But the same agenda and resolution hold sway, here. (It was driven by Eisenhower Era orderliness, you know.)

You can almost see the chess pieces on the board as the story progresses. Someone is moving them, and it becomes clear in a short time that Tracy is already in Checkmate, but no one has called it.

If either version was made again nowadays, imagine the changes! Well, there would be so many that the result would not be the same story at all. Couldn't be. If you made the same thing today it would be an anachronism, and critic's snide-remark fodder. And it would deserve it.

But look at what happens. George Kittredge, who isn't marriageable by any measure, except wealth, is thrown over in the process of getting things back together. What if he hadn't been such a panty-waist (as he is in High Society)? Well, he's a stick in the mud in both versions, and mid-century Hollywood types hate sticks in the mud as much as their small-town voter base loves things going back the way they were. The only thing Hollywood has to say in this case is that George Kittredge is a stick in the mud. Hell, who wouldn't want to remarry Cary Grant rather than what's his name?

Yeah, it's all contrived, including Kate's change of heart. All brought about by rubbing elbows and lips with a rapscallion pulp tabloid reporter. I can't even fathom the swirling eddies under the surface of this play anymore! Bring me some aspirin! No, don't. I'm allergic to aspirin. I break out in hives if I take it. Just turn out the lights when you leave please, and hand me that nice, soft pillow next to your elbow. Thanks. I'll rest my head on it while I re-watch The Philadelphia Story.

Oh, all this criticism is basically true. I love the play, anyhow, for the characters. Oh, and I know a couple who in real life got divorced, then several years later got remarried and have been together for 25 years since.

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Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Rock wrote:I'm a fan of The Philadelphia Story. It's a furious dance of sharp dialogue, and the actors deliver it like nobody's business. I haven't seen High Society.

Apparently Traci Lords named herself after Hepburn's character in Story, if Wikipedia is to be trusted.

Indeed it is that. And that's one of the things I love about it.

I tried searching for "Tracy Lord" to get links for the bottom of this essay, and everything that came up (practically) was for Traci Lords. So, I gave up.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

While most of you sleep, the Phantom Poster...uhm...posts. I should say "creeps" because it almost rhymes and it sounds less dull.

*ahem*

While most of you are asleep, the Phantom Poster creeps.

But he doesn't post anything creepy, just posts some...why can't we call them something other than "posts"? Internet terminology is so redundant. And for our British speakers it sounds like he's mailing a letter or something.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

One of the most powerful figures in both movies is Tracy's little sister. In the 1940 version she is named Dinah. In the 1956 musical remake she is Caroline. No other main character's name changes. The approval rating of the name Dinah must have crashed between 1940 and 1956.

Dinah/Caroline Lord not only approves of her former brother-in-law, C. K. Dexter Haven, she not only has a crush on him, but she has an active campaign to get Tracy to throw over George Kittredge and re-marry Dexter. Tracy Lord never wants to see ex-hubby Dexter Haven again. She forbids anyone to speak of him or to allow him onto the Lord Estate. Dinah immediately invites Dexter to come over to the Lords' manor. Tracy resists in an I'm-still-in-love-with-you movie type rebellion. In the film world "no" never means "no."

And Dinah/Caroline uses this film fact to push her campaign forward at every turn. We don't always see the younger sister at work, but we get the feeling that she's constantly talking Dexter up and George down with everyone, behind the scenes.

Both actresses are cute, but 1940's Virginia Weidler is far more charming than Lydia Reed, who plays Caroline. I have to admit that Reed pulls off the ballerina scene better, though.

In my neighborhood in Little Rock in 1960 there was a boy named Randy who lived around the corner on the main street. He would come around playing with the other boys in the neighborhood. One day I overheard two of the mothers talking about him, and they were saying that when he caused trouble it was almost impossible to stay mad at him "because when you lecture him, he just simply looks you in the eye and smiles. And you can't stay mad." I watched him after that, and it was true. He could disarm any mom on the street with his smile.

The character Dinah Lord reminds me of just such a kid. She's always stretching the boundaries, and getting told to back off, but she doesn't back off and no one does anything to her because she's sooo charming. She seems naive and at times even innocent, but there are gears always turning in her head. This pre-teen manipulator is one of the more interesting characters in the play. She's also a motive force in the way the story turns out, but she is nonetheless a flat character. She doesn't change from opening lines to last curtain call. But she doesn't have to. As a fire, she would be the kind that burns steadily and brightly, but no one would show up with water hoses to put it out. They would just admire the flickering.

A better metaphor would be like this: Dinah is the spring in a wind-up clock. We see the hands, Tracy and Dexter, as they move around the face of the clock. But they would not move without the uncoiling of Dinah/Caroline in the background. It might be an interesting study to find characters who are the motive force of film stories, but who do not appear to be significant at first. And who do not appear in the film very much at all, but still set everything going.

From The Philadelphia Story:Dinah: (watching the wedding, triumphant) I did it. I did it all!

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The Philadelphia Story:Dinah Lord Tuesday, February 12, 2013 Posted by Squirrel Girl at 10:11 AM in A Monologue BlogDinah Lord Quotes at QuotefullyEric M. Lachs/ENG4133 – The ABC’s of Cinema/(The Philadelphia Story) a university term paper. Scroll down to D(inah) in the pdf. "The youngest member of the Lord family mentions to Mike and Liz that her name used to be Diana, but her sister changed it. Diana, derived from an Indo-European root meaning 'heavenly' or 'divine,' relates to the Greek virgin goddess of the moon. Dinah, daughter to Leah and Jacob in the Bible, occupies the subservient role of a rape victim."

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

The fact that this is a musical adaptation of a favorite film made me put off watching it, until ribbon suggested the comparison that's currently underway. The only thing that makes sense to me about there being songs in this movie is that if you're going to hire famous musicians and singers to play the parts, the audience will expect them to sing. Fortunately, the addition of songs to the program doesn't entirely derail the finished product, although The Philadelphia Story is dozens of times better as a film. Not that High Society isn't fun to watch. But, with two exceptions, the songs are simply poked into the story.

The younger sister is still a motive force in getting Dexter and Tracy back together insofar as it's possible to do so. But the character George Kittredge is just so unlikable in this version. And it makes it completely obvious why C. K. Dexter Haven wins the bout.

The change to Dexter being a composer and musician is a bit of a stretch, but necessary I guess to legitimize the music.

Here are some aspects of the film and whether I like them or don't care for them:

Like: The addition of musical interludes doesn't totally derail the shadowy gray darkness that underlies The Philadelphia Story. Ebullience could have eaten away at the core of it all, but somehow it wasn't allowed to.

Like: The song True Love is a memorable, bittersweet melody with words that could have been too damned sugary without the music they were put to. This shows me that the songwriter Cole Porter understood the irony of having it sung by a divorced couple on the eve of her remarriage.

Like: This film looks very good, although like many Technicolor productions of the era the lighting tends toward very flat. The sets and costumes are probably great eye candy for anyone interested in decoration and fashion. The Technicolor consultant and set designer certainly keep it colorful and that's interesting to the eye. Grace Kelly is in it. Paul Vogel's photography is well-conceived and executed. And it has a well-mixed soundtrack for a 1950s musical. Technically, it cuts it really well.

Like: The songs True Love, I Love You Samantha, and Grace Kelly's "drunken" performance of the chorus from You're Sensational.Don't Like: Most of the songs come up in such a way that you can almost hear the plot wheels screeching on the asphalt. High Society is a prime example of what I dislike about most Hollywood musical films. But if you like the music and the plot is really only something to get you from song to song, you may really enjoy this movie!

Like: If you look at the quotes, you can see that the original play is mostly kept intact, but with whole scenes excised to make time for the songs. So, in one sense, the major part of the play is in there, with a cast that's not quite as sparkling as the one in TPS.Don't Like: Some of my favorite scenes in the original version are cut to allow for the addition of musical numbers. The favorite of these is the scene at Dexter Haven's mansion when Mike Connor comes to call, and they wind up writing a tell-all story about Sidney Kidd, the publisher of Spy magazine, and until recently, the boss of both. A song is substituted for this scene, which takes place at the Willie Lord home, and which is just a chum-song for the two characters while they drink. Not a horrible number with Crosby and Sinatra, but damn, it robs us of the best part of the original play.

Don't Like: Louis Armstrong does too much of his Satchmo thing. I'd like to have seen him dial it back a few notches here as he often did on TV variety shows of the 1960s. But, we got what we got.

Don't Like: (And this is a less-severe problem with the original film, too.) It is assumed from the start that Tracy and Dexter will get back together. With George being such a wet blanket we viewers have no doubt. There is no deviation from audience expectation. No moment when we're sure this won't turn out the way we thought. (At least the original film keeps you guessing once in a while.)

Don't Like:Now You Has Jazz is a wonderful little piece of music. Sucks in this movie, though. It's shoveled in as if they couldn't think of anywhere to stick it, so decided to bring the dance to a halt in order to have Bing and Satchmo perform the number.

Overall, I'd say, this does The Philadelphia Story no great disservice. And especially if you like musicals for the music and not the story, give this one a watch. It looks beautiful. The sound mix is good. But it won't ever make my list of musicals I like because the songs are just stuck in.

Charles Walters WikipediaHigh Society (1956 film) WikipediaBing Crosby WikipediaGrace Kelly WikipediaFrank Sinatra WikipediaLouis Armstrong WikipediaHigh Society (1956) Screen: No 'Philadelphia Story,' This; 'High Society' Lacks Hepburn Sparkle By Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, Published: August 10, 1956 "But now that its brittle material has been cast into a musical film, there is little chance of disguising its bright but synthetic qualities. "High Society," its new name set to music, is as flimsy as a gossip-columnist's word, especially when it is documenting the weird behavior of the socially elite."High Society (1956) from At-A-Glance Film Reviews. "The original version has better acting (understandably -- here the stars were cast for their musical talents) and is a better overall film, but High Society is a highly entertaining rendition of the story, and because of the different approach it takes, it's hardly redundant, as many good-but-inferior remakes are."High Society (1956) BBC website. Reviewed by Jamie Russell Updated 28 May 2002. "While it never comes close to the screwball charm of Hepburn and Co's outing, this is still a great musical... and one that's previously been grossly underrated."High Society Devon Bott at RottenTomatoes March 6, 2010. "There are dozens of musicals more deserving of attention, watch them instead."

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Is it true that you can make a mistake by getting married? Is it true that you can make a mistake by getting divorced?

If the play used for these movies asks any truly serious question it asks whether one should be yar in marriage. The word seems to mean easily manageable, referring to a sea-going vessel. I suppose for a human being it would mean being less self-centered, and more flexible. Willing to compromise for the sake of the relationship. Of course, if you are too yar, your spouse or sigoth has the upper hand in everything, always getting his/her way and leaving you to gunnysack.

So the back-story is that Tracy Lord wasn't yar at all, demanding everything her way. Allegedly, this drove C.K. Dexter Haven to drink, which she didn't like, and for which she divorced him. She wanted him to be a bit more straight-laced. Was he too yar? I don't get that impression. It seems that Tracy was not yar at all, and he was reasonably so, except for the drinking, perhaps. In fact, he's a fun-loving rascal who apparently would be a great companion if you wanted to have fun. We see in the 1940 film that he also has a serious side.

Cary Grant's Dexter is reservedly maniac at times (Cary Grant is most often totally maniac in almost every film he's in) and absurdly calm at others. Tracy is keyed up every minute. Bing Crosby's Dexter is about to fall asleep at any given moment, so he "clearly was not the problem" in the marriage. But for this play, the back-story is not really what matters.

The question is, should a husband or wife make a promise to be "yar, so yar?" and if the promise is made should it be trusted?

Relationships, whether branded by the wedding band and vows or not, are notoriously risky. The significant other may/may not be exactly as you think, or they may be playing you. How do you know? You don't. You have to go on cues, half of them made up by your own mind. You want it to go right, or wrong. You want it to last, or you want to walk away. So you see things that may not be there. This is dreadfully compounded if your sigoth is trying to put the best foot forward. You're looking for the best in the beginning, he/she is concealing the ordinary, and that might be detrimental. Is putting the best foot forward being too yar?

A certain verbal exchange holds up the major difference between the old Tracy and the old Dexter:

Tracy: Oh Dexter, are you sure?
Dexter: No, but I'll risk it if you will.

They both risked it before. She wants certainty, but he knows about relationships. The damned thing about relationships is that they're crap shoots. You wake up every day in a crap shoot. You can think things are going unbelievably well, and suddenly they're going unbelievably badly.

And sometimes it's because the other party isn't yar enough. Sometimes, of course, it's because you aren't being yar.

If your relationship with a person has failed before, should you try again? Well, didn't I just write in the paragraphs above that you do try again...every single day?

Perhaps Tracy is able to decide to try marriage with Dexter again because she realizes that George is giving her the other end of the stick. He's straight-laced to the point of being boring, and is unforgiving, and her little fling with Mike leads him to be the one who is not yar. Maybe that's why she decides that she can be yar with Dex. Maybe.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

We're going to skip over rematching Rollerball for right now and go on to something that is very exciting.
Our next full Rematch is A comparison of The Blurb (1958) and The Blurb (1988).

In the original film a small block of text, the titular blurb, oozes out of a meteorite that lands on an old writer's farm.

The writer goes out and pokes it with a stick. The blurb crawls up the stick and onto his hand. He goes to a doctor's office where the blurb eats up everything in the medical journals, and heads for the waiting room where it consumes all the words in the entire collection of outdated magazines. Things get worse as it roams about the small town eating every idea it runs across, leaving everyone with nothing to occupy themselves while sitting on the toilet or eating a solitary meal. At one point the blurb oozes its way into the Public Library which is full of people reading, but also full of books, which it consumes, along with the odd reader. Now it is huge! How will they ever stop it? Once out there, words can never be called back.

How could they possibly remake this, you ask? Well, they did in 1988, with a few additional plot twists.

In the remake story, with fully updated special effects, the renegade block of text is actually a government experiment gone awry. It was created in an attempt to consolidate all knowledge in one place, and make it available to everyone free of charge, but the blurb begins to consume every printed thing in the town, including street signs and warning labels, t-shirts with printing on them, even baby on board tags in vans. It is a fearsome story, and involves the near-death of a child who is almost sliced to ribbons by the sharp points on word balloons that the blurb has absorbed from thousands of comic books. When the blurb ransacks the Library in this version, all kinds of gruesome details are shown. It first attacks the main desk, and then heads straight for the card catalog. Ultimately the patrons run out the front door (loaded with books because the library staff is unable to check out items) followed by the hungry blurb. It's as if the people haven't figured out what the blurb is after!

This is a much terser and more succinct treatment of the monster idea, so some have called it "over the edge." In both cases, of course, the same gimmick is used to stop the blurb monster in its tracks. I won't give that away, in hopes that you will read the upcoming Rematch in full, in case you've never seen the movies.

Uhm, I think we may be delayed a bit while I completely rewrite everything for The Blurb...I mean, The Blob.

So, I guess Rollerball will come next, after all.

A blob from a bog Posted by Stan Carey on October 03, 2011 at Macmillan Dictionary WeBlog.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Starting a new Quickmatch tomorrow. But first, I have to go eat pizza and salad.

Oh, and sleep.

Oh, and have breakfast.

Oh, and do some graphics.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of Rollerball (1975) and Rollerball (2002)In the Cutting Room

1975Antony Gibbs has 50 editor credits listed at IMDb. These range from 2 episodes of The Third Man television series in 1959, to a 2001 TV movie titled James Dean. In between he worked mostly on theatrical projects. Gibbs put together the quirky Tom Jones (1963), Walkabout (1971), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Dune (1984), The Man Without a Face (1993), and Ronin (1998). This shows that he worked well with directors of all styles and across many genres. Gibbs is still living as this post goes up; born in 1925 in the UK. His editing in Rollerball was nominated for a BAFTA.

2002Robert K. Lambert and John Wright share editing credit for the Rollerball remake. Lambert first edited a TV documentary that I saw in 1969, Making of the President 1968. Over time he moved into TV movies, and then theatrical productions. He has just completed his 52nd editorial gig on Nailed (no release date). He also has 9 producer credits for films that you may have heard of. Among his 52 credits are some stinkers, and some respectable movies. Lambert is a long-term auto racer, who builds and races his own cars, according to the IMDb bio.

John Wright's 41 editorial credits include many more well-known movies. His career as a film cutter started in 1973, also with a documentary film. By 1982 he was working on theatrical features (Frances, for example). You will find many familiar titles among his list of credits. He has awards nominations and wins. He has worked with co-editors on several titles. He has been working steadily since Rollerball, including some films that got Academy Award attention.

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Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

As nearly as I can recall no other film included in any Rematch so far has had a Tomatometer rating as low as 3%. This fact, plus all the negative reviews I ran across while researching the film made it extra important for me to go into my first viewing with an open mind. I saw the complete James Caan version for the first time just this month, too. But even with what I hoped was an open mind, the 2002 film still didn't impress me very positively.

This film shares one negative characteristic with Battleship, but to me it isn't nearly as boring as Battleship (although Battleship has a 34% Tomatometer. Go figure). Both films try too hard. You can see fingers constantly attempting to push "all the right buttons," but hitting the right marks (which this movie doesn't do, by the way) doesn't make a movie a hit. It must have something else, which Rollerball 2002 simply doesn't have. What does it lack? A certain je ne sais quoi. And neither did McTiernan. Otherwise he would have put it in. Overall, I think it's fair to say that the people who made this film didn't have any idea what they were doing.

John McTiernan, writers Larry Ferguson and John Pogue, and the producers (McTiernan is listed first as Producer) clearly attempted to target 15 year old boys with this. Why else would a man who had just been the victim of an attempted assassination hear his girlfriend say that she was taking him to the doctor and then home to her bed? Fifteen-year olds are supposed to think about sex all the time, right? And they like explosions, raucous music, blowing people away with shotguns and lots of fast cutting.

Well...apparently not. At least not in this film. Few of them showed up and plunked down dinero to see it.

This film is so unpopular that Netflix doesn't even carry it anymore! It used to be in my DVD queue, but it dropped to the bottom part of the list. Availability unknown. I had to buy the sucker in order to include it in this Quickmatch. In all fairness I have to add that the original film is also unavailable at Netflix.

I don't think any remake in this thread so far has less in common with its original than you see between these two movies. Oh, Jonathan E tosses his cowboy hat into the crowd in film 1, and Jonathan Cross tosses his cowboy hat into a crowd in film 2. Perhaps I typed too soon. The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still probably bears little resemblance to its source film, but it isn't as distant as Rollerball (2002). The upcoming Death Race is also widely different from its predecessor, Death Race 2000.

Here are some aspects of the film and whether I like them or don't care for them:

Like: In the middle of the film there is an attempt made to tell a story. Unfortunately, the film is bookended by mindless mayhem on the Rollerball rink. So putting a story in the middle makes it seem that the film is uneven. What I like is the attempt, not the result.Don't Like: This film explains some stuff needlessly, and lets other things that need explanation go un-commented upon. The target audience doesn't care about politics, but the people the middle was made to appease don't really care as much for the punching and bloody action. It explains whereas the original didn't explain, and both approaches fail for their respective films.

Like: This obvious attempt at pandering by a team of people who don't know how to pander lost loads of money at the box office. I'm so overjoyed about that because it means that we won't see any other overblown, plotless, characterless, bland, over-cut, noisy trash films like this ever after from 2002 on! Yay! (Actually, it does seem to have shut down McTiernan who produced no more films, and directed only one other since Rollerball).

Like: Steve Mason's cinematography is good-looking. Helen Jarvis and Hilton Rosmarin dress the sets nicely. The costumes are weird, but not terribly so. They give a certain Road Warrior ambiance to the proceedings, and seem like what promoters of such a game would go for. (There is a definite feeling that we are in the former Eastern Soviet bloc, rather than Canada, which is the location where this was all filmed.) There are a few set-pieces that come off well, but they can't save the film and don't really drive the plot forward. These are mere plot complications. Looking cool has never been a satisfying thing for a film to be. For me it needs more than mere looks. Yep, the look cannot save a movie. The editors must have been pulling their hair out.

Like: The cast of this film is very international, although the whole film was shot in Canada. We basically see only two Americans or Canadians in the entire movie, other than bit players.

Don't Like: Toward the middle of the film when we're watching an escape done at night as if we were watching through video night-vision, we are suddenly treated to some jokes. Out of nowhere. Is this an attempt to throw in a little sarcasm? As vehicles pass through a wire fence there are cartoon twangs to signify the breaking of the wires. WTF? And at the end of the script the film seems to be making fun of itself. That's something you put in from the get go, not in the last sequence. Again, they didn't have any idea what they were doing.

Don't Like: The resolution of this movie has to involve death, guns, and broads. Well, that's all they could have done. There was no meat to barbecue, here. If that doesn't make any sense, it's right in line with Rollerball 2002!

Don't Like: Jonathan Cross is a kid from Texas who clearly makes bad choices. Including the choice to follow his friend Marcus off to Kazakhstan to become a rollerballer. There is no reason for him to be at the top of the game. It's a new game! Trying to update the story from Harrison's original, and set it in the less distant future, takes away anything the original story had going for it, and that wasn't much.

Don't Like: Petrovich's sole fixation is apparently on getting a North American cable television deal for his fledgling blood sport. -- Huh?

Don't Like: Have you ever been to a smörgåsbord? It's an opulent sort of buffet with all kinds of things that you can pick from to fill your plate. Wonderful. But the smörgåsbord approach that seems to have been McTiernan's aim for this movie, well it doesn't work for films. Because you don't get to pick and choose. You have to eat everything that's on the table whether you want it or not. And that's the possible greatest failing of this movie.

I'm going to steal the close of this review from Roger Ebert, because I can't write anything quite this apropos, and he already put it together. It's about one of the many inane touches that this film has:

Roger Ebert wrote:One of the peculiarities of Television of the Future is a device titled "Instant Global Rating." This supplies a digital readout of how many viewers there are (except on North American cable systems, of course). Whenever something tremendously exciting happens during a game, the rating immediately goes up. This means that people who were not watching somehow sensed they had just missed something amazing, and responded by tuning in.

Read Ebert's review. Skip the movie.

Go back using these buttons.

Rollerball Roger Ebert February 8, 2002. Read Ebert's entire review, here.B Movie Breakdown - Episode 30: Rollerball from internet archive. "You know you're in for a bad time when you find out that one of the movie's own stars slammed it while he was out promoting it."Customer Reviews Rollerball (2002) from "The most helpful favorable review" 5 stars: "This remake could better be understood and appreciated if one looks at it as a "prequel" rather than a "remake". The original Rollerball is set in the far future in a 1984ish society, were as the "remake" is set only 3 years in the future...." and from "The most helpful critical review" one star: "The cookie-cutter nemesis is played by Jean Reno as the owner and general manager of the tournaments. And with John McTiernan (director of Die Hard) at the helm, the whole thing is unexcusable. It looks like he is well past his prime."Rollerball (2002 film) Wikipedia "It is the year 2005. The new sport of Rollerball is hugely popular in Central Asia, Russia, China, Mongolia, and Turkey."Rollerball (película de 2002) de la WikipediaJohn McTiernan WikipediaChris Klein (actor) WikipediaJean Reno WikipediaLL Cool J WikipediaRebecca Romijn WikipediaNaveen Andrews WikipediaRollerball MetacriticExtreme Sport in Kazakhstan: In-Line Skates, Motorcycles and a Metal Ball New York Times Published: February 8, 2002. "Perhaps Mr. McTiernan will soon get around to giving us a remake of Jewison's "Soldier's Story," with Pierce Brosnan in the Howard E. Rollins role. Such a gambit would make about as much sense as this extreme-sports revisit of Jewison's lumbering 1975 "Rollerball," a well-intentioned though heavy-handed assault on capitalism and sanctioned blood lust." Elvis Costello

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

This is one of the films that got a lot of press in the weekly magazines when it was in post-production. The source for this film and the 2002 remake is a 1973 Esquire magazine short story by William Harrison, who co-founded the Master of Fine Arts program (with colleague James Whitehead) at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville back in 1966. Harrison had two of his stories made into films. He is perhaps best-known for the source story for this film, Roller Ball Murder. I read the story in a recently acquired volume that was published in 1975 as a movie tie in. Says so right on the spine!

The short story is vaguely detailed, but it's more or less a collage of vignettes. It takes up only 16 pages in the volume I bought. There is no plot. To become a film script the short story had to be expanded greatly. Many of the concrete events that you see in the 1975 movie had to be invented by the screenwriter, which just happened to also be Harrison. His screenplay and his story converge in only a few areas. They mostly share germ ideas.

Although it is a cult film these days, which confuses modern fans into thinking that the movie was a 1975 hit, Rollerball was not extremely popular with audiences. True, it made more money that it cost to make, but it wasn't what one would think of as a hit. It is defs a niche film. Why anyone thought it would be a $ucce$$ful remake is beyond my comprehension.

As with all speculative futures all the germ ideas are compressed into a few shibboleths to make construction of a social backdrop easier. Corporations run the world. Violence has been outlawed. The bloodlust of people denied violent outlets is channeled into the game Rollerball. Johnathan E is the top Rollerball star in the world. But there are supposed to be no stars.

Norman Jewison (whose Fiddler on the Roof I think is very good) mostly fails to make this interesting at all. In the commentary track the director recorded for the 1998 DVD release, he says that he believed the story was prescient. He also intended to make an anti-violence film. He thought people would be aghast at the idea of this game. Instead, some people tried to start a Rollerball league in real life!

Rollerball (1975) is not a turkey by any means. This film is, sadly, not destined to become one of my favorites. I might have liked it better if I had seen it 39 years ago. Most of you couldn't have seen it 39 years ago, and you'll have to deal with it as a historical artifact, the way I had to when putting this Rematch together.

Here are some aspects of the film and whether I like them or don't care for them:

Like: The game announcer at the beginning of the film sounds real. That's because he is. Bob Miller has done play-by-play as a career. He has 7 movie credits, four of which are "Announcer." Miller's presence lends a great deal of realism to the project.

Like: As goofball as the core idea is, it's good that Norman Jewison attempted to keep the approach serious.
But...Don't Like: Jewison's ultra serious approach really saps the life out of this movie. It needs some humor of some sort so that you don't laugh at the ideas he wants you to buy. Keep in mind that Jewison (according to his commentary track) really believed that by 2018 the world could be run by corporations, and that all governments would be defunct. So he was constructing a warning to save the world. He also found Rollerball as a game to be despicable, and thought audiences would hate the idea as much as he did. You read the real-life result above.

Like: Jewison selected futuristic-looking architecture for his exterior shoots, but the interiors, the clothing and so forth don't look too different from 1975. This should have helped keep the audience focused on the ideas, and probably would have if there had been enough ideas. It was a good idea, regardless of other truths about the movie.

Like: Jewison selected André Previn to create the musical backdrop for the film. Previn decided to use classical music, which Jewison agreed to because the music becomes timeless, in the director's words. I think this part works very well.

Like: Jewison seems to have tried to make an attempt to let the audience figure out the workings of this futuristic society. I generally favor that approach.
But...Don't Like: The film explains nothing to you. This leaves you awash in a nonsensical plot set in a world that doesn't make sense. Not the most savvy set-up for a filmed entertainment. Remember, in 1975 there were no VHS tapes that people could buy or rent to watch this later. Very few places had cable television, and although HBO was 3 years old, there was not yet HBO in most places in the US. Most viewers saw Rollerball a single time at one theater. Only film geeks would go back enough times to actually comprehend what Jewison is up to in his movie world.

Don't Like: This is perhaps one of the last gasps of the This. Is. Important. tone in science fiction films. Humor is absent in this long-standing approach, because humor would keep small-brained audiences from realizing that the ideas here are Big. That approach failed with me as a boy, as a teenager, and still fails with me. You don't make your film important by making it lugubrious, or make your opinion important by throwing in big words like "lugubrious."

Don't Like: Every female in this film is merely furniture. Jewison tossed her in to provide male viewers something to look at, since there is often nothing else going on.

Don't Like: One of the sillier ideas in the short story, and I guess it's supposed to be frightening, is that executives could take people's wives because they wanted them...and the wives would simply agree to go to this new husband! Did William Harrison even know any women?

Don't Like: The movie moves slowly. Too slowly. The short story moves lickety split and still seems too long. There are not enough ideas in this film (either futuristic prognostications, social critique, or psychological analysis) to fill out its 2-hour run time. And the style is the mid-1970s "trope" of the future as ascetic and dull. Which makes for a lot of dull movies about the future from that period.

Like: The final game that is not a game is somewhat tense. In fact, it is the only time when the film achieves any tension at all, at least for me. It is probably the best-done section of the movie. Sadly, there is never any sense that Jonathan is actually in any danger. There is never a sense that anyone in the film is in any danger. Which is silly, because players in the game get killed. It's all done very much at arm's length, as many science fiction films of the era were. You'd think directors would have learned that you can depict a sterile future and still let the audience connect with the characters from 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968).

Don't Like: The film is shot and edited like a character study. But there isn't enough characterization for it to be a character study. And there isn't enough plot for it to be a story. So it feels empty. It feels just like empty pictures on the screen. I'm not saying that there aren't worthy ideas behind this film, only that they aren't evident in the filmed presentation of the tale.

If you are a 1970s science fiction film completist, watch this film. If you have nothing else to do (such as sweep the floor or get a haircut) watch this film. If you need to see all the films of James Caan or Norman Jewison, well, you'll have to watch this film. If you thought the 1956 TV film of Nineteen Eighty Four was riveting, watch this film.

But no matter whether you watch this film or not, do not watch the 2002 remake. You have been warned.

Go back using these buttons.

The Sci-Fi Film School: Episode 19 - Rollerball From the internet archive. "On this episode of The Sci-Fi Film School, Matt and Dave discuss the 1975 movie Rollerball."Rollerball (1975 film) WikipediaNorman Jewison WikipediaWilliam Harrison (author) WikipediaJames Caan WikipediaJohn Houseman WikipediaMaud Adams WikipediaMoses Gunn WikipediaJohn Beck (actor) WikipediaRoger Ebert's Top 10 of 1975. Note that Rollerball is not on the list.Futuristic World of 'Rollerball' New York Times Published: June 26, 1975. "Yet "Rollerball" isn't a satire. It's not funny at all and, not being funny, it becomes, instead, frivolous." Vincent CanbyRollerball BadMovies.org. Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 19 March 2003. "The executives running the world want Jonathan to leave the sport for a single reason: he is a hero. By surviving and rising above the other players, he has become more important than the game itself. That cannot be allowed. The workers must see the futility of individual glory. The executive heads want players to die, as evidenced by rollerball's lack of a farm league."Hell on Wheels from The Paris Review December 11, 2013 by James Hughes. "Before NFL collisions in HD and murderous YA fiction in IMAX colonized our culture, a short story published in Esquire in 1973 anticipated the blitz on both fronts. William Harrison’s “Roller Ball Murder” forecasted a future where corporations have replaced all governments and world armies, and nationalism is exorcised at ultraviolent roller derbies. The games keep the people in line, so long as they’re tuned into what Harrison presciently dubbed 'multivision.'"

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

1975William Harrison wrote both the original short story and the first screenplay adapted from it. He lived to be 79 years old, until October of 2013. He has four screen writing credits, two of which are for the two films we are comparing.

2002
William Harrison gets credit for the short story and 1975 screenplay, but the 2002 screenplay was synthesized by Larry Ferguson and John Pogue.

Ferguson has 12 screenwriter credits, the last of which is Rollerball. So this film must have stalled his career the way it did McTiernan's. Ferguson is known for Highlander (1986), The Hunt for Red October (1990) and Alien 3 (1992). Since Rollerball (2002) he has acted as associate producer for one video program.

Pogue wrote U. S. Marshals (1998) which kicked off his screen writing career. Rollerball was his third screen credit as writer. There have been 5 since, the most recent of which is The Quiet Ones set for release in 2014, and which he also directed. The blurb says, "A University physics professor assembles a team to help create a poltergeist." (sigh)

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Do you love it or hate it when I post so many entries in a short amount of time?

Because when i put up the Scum FlasHmatch all in one day, there were thousands of page views over the following week.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Quite-Gone Genie wrote:It means I always have to play catch-up, but it's nice to have something to read during the forum's midday slowdown. I still can't believe you bought Rollerball!

I can't believe I watched it! (And lived)

Cheap used copy. Copies, actually.

But there was no other way to see it. Teh Frix doesn't haz it, and teh 'Brary doesn't haz the 2002 (see, our local library does have taste). Didn't want to cancel the match.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

Whew! Just caught up with the your excellent Philadelphia Story/High Society matchup. Like you, I think Philadelphia Story is pretty much the best thing ever, so this is quite a lopsided match. High Society is cute, though. The songs didn't irritate me at all, Grace Kelly is a great ice princess, and the cast is having so much fun it's contagious. Plus, I could watch Frank Sinatra all day.

I don't think the story itself is so archaic. The central problem of Tracy's self-righteousness applies just as well to people today. I guess you're referring to the idea of a woman being 'manageable,' but, the characters, at least in Philadelphia Story, are complex enough that never becomes an issue for me. Yar is kind of an arcane word, but the concept is just as important today as it ever was, which you cover beautifully in your essay, by the way.

YouTookMyName wrote:Don't Like: Every female in this film is merely furniture. Jewison tossed her in to provide male viewers something to look at, since there is often nothing else going on.

Don't Like: One of the sillier ideas in the short story, and I guess it's supposed to be frightening, is that executives could take people's wives because they wanted them...and the wives would simply agree to go to this new husband! Did William Harrison even know any women?

This is the biggest flaw in the film, none of the women are interesting in the slightest. Rollerball is the kind of movie that appealed to me as a kid. Now not so much.

Shieldmaiden wrote:Whew! Just caught up with the your excellent Philadelphia Story/High Society matchup. Like you, I think Philadelphia Story is pretty much the best thing ever, so this is quite a lopsided match. High Society is cute, though. The songs didn't irritate me at all, Grace Kelly is a great ice princess, and the cast is having so much fun it's contagious. Plus, I could watch Frank Sinatra all day.

If you were even older than me you might have been among the throngs of young women who stood at the stage screaming at Sinatra in the 40s the way girls my age did at The Beatles 20 years later.

The only thing that irritates me about the songs in High Society is that they are shoe-horned in. but, as I wrote, it doesn't damage the story all that much. And as for the songs themselves, most are toe-tappers while you watch, but I don't remember them. Maybe age. Mine.

Shieldmaiden wrote:I don't think the story itself is so archaic. The central problem of Tracy's self-righteousness applies just as well to people today. I guess you're referring to the idea of a woman being 'manageable,' but, the characters, at least in Philadelphia Story, are complex enough that never becomes an issue for me.

Yes, I was defs thinking about it from the standpoint of what is expected of a 21st century girl or woman. After all, back then, there was nothing "out of bounds" about those expectations at all. As for the self-righteousness aspect, you are right on with your observation. That part of The Philadelphia Story comes close to being time-proof.

Shieldmaiden wrote:Yar is kind of an arcane word, but the concept is just as important today as it ever was, which you cover beautifully in your essay, by the way.

Why, thank you.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

dreiser wrote:
This is the biggest flaw in the film, none of the women are interesting in the slightest. Rollerball is the kind of movie that appealed to me as a kid. Now not so much.

Ah, very interesting. See, I should have picked up on the apparent fact that Jewison made his 1975 film to appeal to 15-year old boys, too. Or even younger ones. So, did you find the treatment of women in the film to be as much of a flaw back then? I mean, a lot of them are pretty sufficient eye-candy. Sadly, as you point out, that's all they are.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of Rollerball (1975) and Rollerball (2002)Behind the Lens

1975Douglas Slocombe started as a cinematographer in 1940, ending his career in 1989 with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, his third Indy film. He photographed Lady Jane, one of my favorite historical films, three years before. I can say that I have seen 6 of his last 7 works. In fact, I've seen 12 films that he shot, but he has 80 credits at IMDb. It is unusual for cinematographers to have only theatrical credits, but Slocombe does. If you look at his awards page you will see that the British honored one of their own, but Hollywood only went so far as to nominate his work. His Rollerball work got him one nomination and one win.

2002Steve Mason started shooting movies in 1977. Strictly Ballroom was his 7th job as DP. He shot Rollerball and Basic for John McTiernan. Since 2003 he has 13 more credits, one of which is DP on 4 episodes of Mad Men. Born in Australia in 1954 he continues to work behind the camera, with a 2014 scheduled release (A Change of Heart) in pre-production at this time.

Go back using these buttons.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

YouTookMyName wrote:So, did you find the treatment of women in the film to be as much of a flaw back then? I mean, a lot of them are pretty sufficient eye-candy. Sadly, as you point out, that's all they are.

The eye candy was plenty to satisfy my limited movie standards back then.

Re your sig, are you working through the works of Abel Ferrara? I see New Rose Hotel got a 3/10.

And were you already watching his stuff before that Invaders Rematch that included his film Bodysnatchers?

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

I let Gort pay for 20GB of Photobucket bandwidth. For the past several months there has been an alert email saying that my account was nearing the bandwidth limit. Tonight it went over. Only my avatar seems to have disappeared, though.

I guess my habit, I meant to type "hobby" is costing me a little more than the price of DVDs to grab frames, now.

That's cool.

But I still can't believe that more than 10 GB of content has been transferred out of Photobucket by this thread in only 21 days. In here and in a few other threads would be the only source of that traffic. So, I spoze that's cool, too!

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

It didn't occur to me that I could have made a new account with one of my other email addresses and have gotten an additional 10GB that way! Until after I'd paid for this.

Anyway, it will make it easier to keep track of where things are.

(I tell myself)

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

1975Norman Jewison directed In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), A Soldier's Story (1984), The Hurricane (1999). So how did he mess up with Rollerball? He knows how to tell a story with sound and picture, but all his instincts failed him with this film. A Soldier's Story by itself garnered him 3 Oscar nominations, and 3 Golden Globe nominations. It won the Golden Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival. Fiddler on the Roof won 3 Oscars out of 8 nominations. Some of his films were bona fide hits. He has the touch that makes audiences relate to the story on the screen. Jewison has 42 director credits, and 39 producer credits to date. Jewison is still alive, although his last screen credits are for The Hurricane, released 15 years ago.

2002John McTiernan has a string of hit actioners to his credit. His awards range from nominations for Predator, and Last Action Hero, to Razzie wins for Last Action Hero. He was the director of Predator (1987), Die Hard (1988), The Hunt for Red October (1990), and The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) remake. His 11 directorial credits include solid box office, and near flops. His last film to date is Basic (2003), which has an estimated $50 million budget, with very very small box office returns. His career rose quickly and may have begun to wane with The 13th Warrior (1999). If you read his IMDb bio you will learn another reason why he may have made no films since 2003.

Go back using these buttons.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

A Comparison of Rollerball (1975) and Rollerball (2002)Lines You Might Like

1975Stadium Announcer: Good evening. Welcome to Houston, the Energy City, home of the defending rollerball world champions. This key international battle pits divisional champions Madrid against powerful Houston. Here they come for a standing ovation. Houston, led by captain Jonathan E, again their leading scorer this year. OK. Let's go. The controller indicates he is ready. Our 30 Multivision cameras will bring you all the thrills and excitement of this game.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Mr Bartholomew: You were fine tonight, all of you.Mean! Sharp! You boys did well again.Players: Thank you, Mr Bartholomew.Mr Bartholomew (to Moon Pie): And you, you rolled, you really rolled.Moon Pie: Yeah.Mr Bartholomew: You play like our champion here. You take lessons from him?Moon Pie: No, we just give lessons to the other team!

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Jonathan: Retire... How can I do that?Mr Bartholomew: On your special programme. Some people feel this programme should be used to announce your retirement.Jonathan: Who wants that?Mr Bartholomew: When this special was first planned by us here at ENERGY, we saw it as a good thing. Now the Executive Directorate wants a change. The programme is scheduled, the world is waiting, so this does seem the perfect time.Jonathan: The team, they depend on me.Mr Bartholomew: Jonathan, let's think this through together.
You know how the game serves us. It has a definite social purpose. Nations are bankrupt, gone. None of that tribal warfare any more. Even the corporate wars are a thing of the past.Jonathan: I know that...Mr Bartholomew: So now we have the majors and their executives. Transport, food, communication, housing, luxury, energy.
A few of us making decisions on a global basis for the common good. The team is a unit. It plays with certain rhythms. So does an executive team, Jonathan.
Now everyone has all the comforts, you know that. No poverty, no sickness. No needs and many luxuries, which you enjoy just as if you were in the executive class. Corporate society takes care of everything. And all it asks of anyone, all it has ever asked of anyone ever, is not to interfere with management decisions.Jonathan: I don't mean to resist. I'm just tryin' to understand.Mr Bartholomew: This is for your own benefit. You must know that, Jonathan. All decisions concerning you are.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Cletus: Hell, I forget which corporation is which. Any ass knows that fire's ENERGY. Who wrote the music? Where does the music come from?

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Clerk: Can I help you, please?Jonathan: Yeah. I tried to order some books and they said I had to appear at the centre personally.Clerk: That's right, this is our circulation unit. Make your choice here or by catalogue. There must be a mistake. These books are classified. They have been transcribed and summarised.Jonathan: Who summarises them?Clerk: I suppose the computers do.Cletus: What do you need books for?Jonathan: I wanna study up on some things.Clerk: You could go to the computer centre where the real librarians are. But we have all the edited versions here. Anything I think you'd want.Jonathan: Let's see, then. This is not a library and you're really not a librarian.Clerk: I'm only a clerk, that's right. I'm sorry, really.Jonathan: The books are really in computer banks being summarised? Where is that?Clerk: There's a computer bank in Washington. The biggest is in Geneva. That's a nice place to visit.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Team Coach (to Jonathan): But can't you do what you're told? For your own good, get out!

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--
(Jonathan looks at Moon Pie who is lying on a gurney, brain-dead, and speaks to the Japanese Doctor in charge)Jonathan: Does he... ah... Does he dream?Japanese Doctor: No. There is no brain wave at all. No sort of consciousness. Just a deep coma. A vegetable. No dreams. Nothing.Jonathan: But even, uh, a plant... uh, feels something.Japanese Doctor: Who can say? Please.
(hands Jonathan the release form)Jonathan: It, uh, senses life. I mean, uh, it turns towards the sun. It's alive, isn't it?Japanese Doctor: (stressing) You must sign.Jonathan: You, uh, you just leave him the way he is. Just leave him the way he is.Japanese Doctor: Someone will have to sign. There is no other way.Jonathan: Arrangements will be made.Japanese Doctor: Please. There are hospital rules that have to be...Jonathan: No, there aren't. There aren't any rules at all.
(turns and walks away)

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--
(Jonathan is on his ranch with his ex-wife, Ella, who has come for a visit at his request.)Jonathan: Look, they want me to quit, Ella.Ella: Then quit.Jonathan: Just like that, huh?Ella: But you've got to do it now. You've got to before it's too late, whether you want to or not. Look, Johnny... the next game there won't be any substitutions allowed... and no time limit. You'll die, Johnny. Everybody will die.Jonathan: No time limit. They tell you that?Ella: Yes.Jonathan: They tell you to convince me to quit?Ella: Yes, but that isn't why I came here. You have to get out for your own sake. Oh, please Johnny, please.Jonathan: They tell you to stay if... ah... I did quit?
(Ella is silent with a plea in her eyes)Jonathan: You my big reward?
(Jonathan walks away from her as melodramatic violin music starts to play)

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--
(Jonathan is erasing his favorite recordings of him with Ella, as she walks up and speaks.)Ella: You still don't understand why I came here?Jonathan: You're the only person I ever wanted. I wanted you on my side, that's all.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--
(Jonathan has gone to the computer center in Geneva. He meets the head librarian, who is in a tizzy.)Jonathan: Misplace some data?Librarian: The whole of the thirteenth century.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Bartholomew: The game was created to demonstrate the futility of individual effort.

2002
(As Jonathan Cross skates onto the track, the Announcer reads a pack of lies about him)Announcer: Hailing from the wide-open plains of Texas, a former rodeo champion and first-round draft pick by the prestigious National Hockey League back in the States. Considered the next Wayne Gretzky he refused a king's ransom from the NHL to play here in a real man's league. The Red Horsemen's sure bet for Rookie of the Year...who kills his stubble each morning with a Wilkinson Sword Tri-flex. Here he is, your very own...Jonathan Cross.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Announcer: Cross has scored in record time! Only 12 seconds after the first ball...and he soars over the heads of the Horde! Cross has led a 1-to-0 lead!
(Jonathan goes to the bench, gets a soft drink out of a cooler, pops off the lid and takes a large swig. But the camera can't see the label on the bottle.)Player: She say you must do again.Jonathan: What?Coach: Drink again. (She points to the cameras overhead)Coach: Label out.Jonathan: Label out.Player: Put the label out.
(Jonathan drinks deeply again, this time with the label toward the camera.)

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Petrovich (to a prospective investor in his Rollerball league): I will not allow this game to become corrupted like so many things in this part of the world. The integrity of the game must be maintained.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Ridley (to a pair of women he's just picked up): That's the way I dig it, yo. You don't speak much.
Later...Jonathan (to Ridley, querulous): "The way I dig it, yo"?Ridley: You ever try to get laid with an accounting degree?

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Jonathan: It's a rough game. That's why we get paid.Denny: You make a hundred times what I do.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--
(Jonathan pushes Aurora back against a wall, gently, and looks at the scar that crosses her right eye socket.))Jonathan: Come on, Aurora. You don't need to hide all the time.Aurora: I don't.Jonathan: Yes, you do. You live in the dark, for Christ's sake. Your face isn't nearly as bad as you think.Aurora: I know that.Jonathan: Yeah, that's why you always turn your left side to people.Aurora: I don't always turn.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--
(Jonathan and Aurora enter an apartment in a blockhouse. The room has been trashed. A man is still in the room, but he is dead.)Jonathan: Let me guess, this isn't your friend Sergei, is it?Aurora: No, Sergei's gone.Jonathan: Of course he is. We can't call the police about it, either, right?Aurora: Let's get out of here. He may be the police.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--
(Ridley and Jonathan are attempting to escape to Russia on a bike, they have gone down a dirt road to escape some vehicles, but now lights loom up behind them again)Jonathan: Shit. Ridley, we've got lights! Don't look! Watch the road!
...Jonathan: lt looks like they're gaining on us.Ridley: What?
...Jonathan: They're definitely gaining on us, and fast!
...Jonathan: What the hell could they be driving?Ridley: Look, my limit's 150, man.Jonathan: Faster! What in the world are they driving?
(An airplane swoops just over them and sets down ahead)Jonathan: Shit!Ridley: Son of a bitch!Ridley: Come on, baby!
...Ridley: Who said this isn't an off-road bike?Jonathan: I got news for you, Rid! They've got an off-road airplane!

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Petrovich: You see Yevgeny over there, so full of himself now. He used to work in the post office. I introduced him to the proper financing, and now he owns the mines. Yeah, making a fortune. Keeps the miners in line. Good business. You might wonder why I'm not in it myself. I don't need to own the mines, Jonathan.
Do you know why? Because I own the man who owns the mines. All he has, I have. Same with the supermarkets, the TV station, locomotive plant. I don't need a political position, because I own the men who do. We learn to separate ourselves from humanity. Like you, Jonathan, separate yourself from your teammates.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--Petrovich: Sanjay, you are a rat. But you are my rat, and I love you.

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--
(Jonathan has killed Petrovich who was trying to kill him. Eventually, Sanjay shows Jonathan that he holds the keys that he will need to escape.)Sanjay: Well, young Jonathan you've done marvelously well. But one basic rule in this sort of thing is that you must never kill a tyrant unless you've made an arrangement with his successor. You do see what I mean, don't you?Jonathan: Yeah. It means I'm not done yet.
(He fires a shotgun at Sanjay, killing him, too.)

**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--**--**--**--**--**--**--++++++++++--
(Aurora finds Jonathan and walks beside him as people stream past.)Aurora: Get some of these shotgun pellets removed.Jonathan: Nah, he missed me.Aurora: Not entirely, he didn't.
(People walk by and pat Jonathan on the shoulder, the back, or the head.)Jonathan: What are they doing?Aurora: You stood up to one of the monsters that run their lives. And they saw you do it.
...(they climb onto the bed of a farm truck with other people)Jonathan: Where are we headed?Aurora: To a doctor, to start with. And then if you're able I thought I might take you home to my bed.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

YouTookMyName wrote:Clerk: Can I help you, please?Jonathan: Yeah. I tried to order some books and they said I had to appear at the centre personally.Clerk: That's right, this is our circulation unit. Make your choice here or by catalogue. There must be a mistake. These books are classified. They have been transcribed and summarised.Jonathan: Who summarises them?Clerk: I suppose the computers do.Cletus: What do you need books for?Jonathan: I wanna study up on some things.Clerk: You could go to the computer centre where the real librarians are. But we have all the edited versions here. Anything I think you'd want.Jonathan: Let's see, then. This is not a library and you're really not a librarian.Clerk: I'm only a clerk, that's right. I'm sorry, really.Jonathan: The books are really in computer banks being summarised? Where is that?Clerk: There's a computer bank in Washington. The biggest is in Geneva. That's a nice place to visit.

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN

For every science fiction film that gets one or two "predictions" right, there are a much larger number that get nothing right. Sometimes a film that gets a base run will be wrong often enough to lose the game, so to speak. Beginning after World War II predictions of the future began to grow darker and more negative.

When is the last time you saw a movie that promises a comfortable future that wasn't selling something? Perhaps modern films are selling something: a dark, dark future. Think back on the modern update of Oz that we looked at in the comparison of Wizard of Oz films a while back. Since the 1970s there seem to be many films that cry out, "If you think things are bad now, wait until you hear what we have to tell you." "Things cannot get better, only worse." "Danger, Will Robinson!"

Possibly, somewhere, there is a typed draft of a 1905 short story, play or novel that warned of the terrible things that would come of mass adoption of the automobile as a means of transportation. Of course, few have ever seen it. As far as I know this is pure speculation. Maybe someone back then didn't see Progress as bringing forth a Beautiful World.

Not many, though.

H.G. Wells created visions of a future where all of the problems of humankind would be conquered. Did George Orwell change this with Nineteen Eighty-Four (which came out in 1949)? Actually, the notion of a world where babies are grown in bottles preceded that abysmal prediction by a generation, when Brave New World came out in 1932. Aldous Huxley has said that he wrote this story as a parody of H. G. Wells' tales of Utopian tomorrows. Not all of Wells is about shiny tomorrows, though. Think of The Time Machine, and Things to Come.

So, what tradition was William Harrison following when he penned Roller Ball Murder?...At the time he wrote the story there was a game being televised via syndication on local TV stations. Roller Derby was decried by some as being a way to worship violence. What about rugby? American Football. WWF (now known as WWE)? Well, they were also being decried at that time. But Harrison might have seen the penchant of the masses to watch such things for entertainment as a modern recurrence of bread and circuses. "How bad could this get? What could this devolve into?" he might have asked himself. And Roller Ball Murder was the outcome of his mind experiment.

Although the cover of the book says only "In the not too distant future" (yes, I hear the MST3K theme song playing in my head), Harrison's screenplay sets the story in 2018, only 4 years away as this goes up on the net. I honestly don't recall anyone saying that year in the film, though. There is no title card at the beginning of the movie. I think it's only in the publicity materials. The future is dismal, but still 43 years into the unseen future of 1975. The message is that things could get worse, but there is time to change our evil ways. There is time to take back individual liberty from those who would buy and sell us like cattle.

The 2002 adaptation seems to take the approach that the dystopian future surrounds us, now. It's already gotten bad. It was set only 3 years into the "near future" at the time of release. Although the film was a commercial failure, and the critics detested it, there is still a useless message in it. By taking a story that was pushed 45 years into the future when written, and setting it only 3 years away, the filmmakers say that it is already too late. We've let this thing happen. Not to the drastic extent of Harrison's dark analysis, but it's taken us over, nonetheless. Yet, even the 2002 Rollerball film claims that we still have time to overthrow the oppressors.

So, we are nine years past the dystopian underpinnings of the 2002 film, and we are four years shy of the time when Jonathan E's world might have existed. The ubiquity of advertising shows that the wealthy see no restrictions in trying to separate us from whatever money we might have. If they can persuade us at any time of day or night to give in to their wheedling, they can become even wealthier. But many who drown us in advertising messages are merely trying to become wealthy. And not all of you out there see the world as an "adverdystopia" the way I do.

Corporations have a depressing degree of political influence, but they aren't technically "running everything." And there aren't any games established by the powers that be which are meant specifically to demonstrate to the common human being that you cannot possibly win. Even though Norman Jewison, director of the 1975 film, believed that what his film shows was possible by 2018, the future shown in his movie hasn't come to pass. At least not in that way.

But we have to keep in mind that science fiction is meant to be speculation, not prediction. It is judged both in the present and in the past in terms of its ideas, not whether it "got things right."

Go back using these buttons.

Foursquare Evokes Minority Report With Talk of Automatic Ads from wired.com "Of course, the company could also creep users out by tracking them too closely or annoy them with spammy ads — or both."Darker Shadows Oz Rematch essay #4Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) filmconnoisseur Tuesday, June 12, 2012 "How is Orwell’s novel slowly becoming a reality? Let’s see, we can start by mentioning that ‘Big Brother’ is watching over us all the time."1940s Roller Derby photoBrave New World (1980) from spicy movie dogs.com "There is no family, there is only perfection. Babies are genetically engineered into specific roles: Alphas have it easy and are bred to innovate and lead, Betas are happy admins and are bred to breed, Gammas and Epsilons are happy laborers that handle the manual labor."x96 ROLLERBALL (3/26/98) homegame.org "cthulhu> Rollerball is PEOPLE... oops, wrong 70s sci-fi movie."

Gort/YTMN left the forum due to trolling on August 25, 2018.
I had fun. Thanks for reading!

"The wealthy and powerful always remind us that cream rises to the top.
What they fail to acknowledge is that pond scum also rises to the top.
And there is a lot more pond scum in the world than there is cream.
If you become rich and powerful, I hope that you will be cream rather than pond scum." --YTMN